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What is Google Webmaster Tools?

According to Google themselves, "Improve your site's visibility in Google search results. It's fr-ee."

In a nutshell, it's a suite of fr-ee tools to help webmasters get the best from Google, primarily in terms of SEO.

When I say 'webmasters' I mean you! It's a free service and once you have registered and setup an account, you'll be able to see some simple and useful stuff about your web site - or indeed multiple sites. You just need to verify that you own (or manage) the site in question.

Why Bother With It?

Well, it's useful to be able to get an overview on how Google 'Sees' your website. From the dashboard are links to 'Site configuration', 'Your Site on the Web' , 'Diagnostics' and 'Labs'.

From these various tabs, you can quickly make sure your site is being indexed properly, amongst other things. You can change the suggested frequency that Google re-indexes your site for example and you can ensure that your site maps and robots files are included and are up to date.

Meta-information, such as page titles (important) and meta-tags are displayed if there is missing or duplicate content - a quick way to check.

A really useful tool is the malware function, which removes your site if it detects that there is malware on your site. I've had a client that had their site hacked and wondered why they were getting significantly less sales. If you do get hacked and it's flagged up by Google, you can use this section to re-submit the ex-offending site once you've removed the malware.

One section which is possibly the most interesting (if you're not using any form of tracking software) is the 'search queries' panel. This shows you which keyphrases are causing your website to be displayed and you can see if they are rising or falling against a previous date range.

You can also see who's linking to your website, although there are far more comprehensive tools for this on the market.

Presumably, the Google Labs functions (e.g. Video sitemaps and page performance) will become more mainstream soon enough and will be added to. The suite of services here is very basic really but certainly worth a look if you haven't already used it or haven't invested in other, more comprehensive web monitoring and management software.

If nothing else, it enables you to monitor several websites at the same time for malware or missing pages, duplicate content etc.

We can help you with your web marketing. To start the ball rolling, register now at http://www.mklink.com/getstarted .

'til next time,
Mike Knight - MKLINK.

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